De Niro T-Wrect

Coarse haired colleagues, chronic masturbators, cream huffers, and greasy fringed girls,

I'm lucky to be alive. I kiss the earth and sniff the breeze. On friday night my brother and I caught a taxi with a mad man, a man of at least 50 years with an obvious back catalogue of paranoia and speeding tickets.

As soon as our rumps touched the weave of the seats the taxi driver stomped his foot on the accelerator and swerved out in front of a bus. As he did this he lowered his window and yelled "Oooogaaaaa Boooggaaaaa!" at another taxi as he hurtled down the street.

"I'm getting out of the industry" he told us. Perhaps he was going to jail?

"I'm going to Holland" he said. "Getting out of this country" as he clipped a roundabout.

"To Amsterdam?" my brother asked.

"Holland!" he said. "Look at this" (he flicked a photo of a blurry guitar on his phone). "That's a hemp guitar. Made out of hemp. They've got a hemp museum in Holland. I went there. Showed 'em this picture of my guitar. They said "that's a work or art that" and they want it in their museum."

"Wow! How do you make them?" my brother said.

"With hemp!" he said.

"But how? Like resin and fibre?"

"Hemp fibres! I use hemp fibres! I'm not going to go how I make 'em though because it's a secret. Not going to go into mate!"

The whole time the fuel light was flashing on the dashboard and he was pushing 90 in a 60 zone. We were speeding up a hill towards a red light. I questioned the man's sanity and the light went green.

"How many have you made?"

"I've made one. But I'm the only one who knows how to do it. Its all up here. Going to make a thousand in my first year in Holland!"

"A thousand?" we asked. "That's a lot of work"

"Well I'm not going to make them. I'm going to have a hundred people working for me and I'm going to walk around with a cup of coffee and say "yes/yes/no do more" to the workers. You can put pictures in the guitar. Put coins and hair in the resin. People from around the world can email you and say "I want some artwork in it" and I'll write back to them that it'll cost more and that's how I can get me money. With all the art work".

"And you use sheets of resin and fibre?"

"Look, I'm not going into it! People are trying to steal my ides. I'm not saying you guys are going to steal them but I'm not going into it!"

"What kind of head stocks do you use?" my brother asks.

"I use just normal ones."

"How do they sound?"

"They sound like guitars mate!"

"So what's the advantage of using hemp?"

"Well it's the strongest natural fibre known to man. Besides cobwebs. Cobwebs is the first, hemp is the second, and human hair is the third."

"Silk's the strongest natural fibre?"

"Cobwebs! And hemp and hairs from a man's head!I'm also going to make violins. I had an Internet site showing the guitar I made. I got over a million orders from all around the world. Had to close the site down. It was just there to test the waters. People wanted them. They all wanted them. Germans would want the violin. Love violins."

We got to my house in the fastest time ever. I was relieved to get out of the car. The guy had breathed all our oxygen and was probably planning on taking us to a deserted car park and killing us with a non-interrupted onslaught of bullshit.

"What a fuckwit!" my brother said.

*I just searched the net and hemp guitars do exist, are in production, and they don't seem to be made by a taxi driver from Fremantle . Looks like the Holland trip is off.

Whale World Glue Sniffing

One time in primary school my class went to a shoe factory. It was in a county town where they used to kill whales.The factory made ugg boots. While we were there my nose started bleeding. I didn't have any tissues so I started to sniff to try and retrieve the flow. Plan backfired. They used so much solvent glue in the factory that my nervous and continued huffing made me feel all tall and stretched. I got so high that I had to go outside before I fainted.

Later on at another location, while at the urinal, a class mate asked me if I wanted to 'sword fight'.

Tie me up (the bowl cut kid)

Oliver from across the road asked my brother and I to tie him up once. He came over and said "Can you tie me up?".

We obliged.

We took him to the back shed and wrapped his arms to his sides with masking tape. We went round and round until he was mummified - a large tape worm if you will. The whole time we did this he had a contented smile on his face. Like getting tied up was the most relaxing thing that could happen to you.

There was a house getting built directly across the road from our's. We lifted Oliver like a wounded Vietnam vet and placed him on his side on a freshly dried concrete slab. He was laughing to himself.

We then went inside and played Sega and ate cheese.

He said that some older brothers from down the road who had long hair and wore black t-shirts and rode BMXs had came past and poked him with a stick a couple of times. After this he managed to get up and hop back to his house.

I can't work out if my brother and I did the wrong thing in taping the kid up. He was a strange guy.

"I'm going to butter him up see, tell him that Rogerson's Bicycle Tyres are made from the smoothest Panama rubber and that if he complies with our little request we'd be more than happy to sponsor him in the upcoming tournament. He just has to eat the mustard. Has to get a good coal miner's handful and smash it up into his gums. Hoo Mabel, I need to see him eat that mustard with those big muscular hands! I want to see him cough and gurgle on the vinegary heat, yes, to see those athletic cheeks rosy up in playful agony. I want him to say "was that enough?" and then to tell him to keep shoveling the brown, keep ingesting that filth you filthy, filthy man! Mustard man, mustard man! That's what I'll holler! And he'll say "is this how you usually conduct business?" and I'll tell him it's the only way. Nothing says speed and determination like a man that can suck back repeated gobfulls of Keens English. It builds character. Makes a man a man. Beasts don't eat mustard - you can bet your bottom dollar on that sir! And once he finishes that mustard I'm going to kiss him on his big blistered lips and ask him to marry me! Ha!"

Also

Oliver also told me that the best way to masturbate was with "a piece of string tied in a loop and some soap".

Holy shit!

Boring town boring

I saw the best graffiti the other day. In a young defiant hand 'Girls suck. Tagging Rulz" was written on the bin of a neighbour.
That's probably the greatest way ever to get back at the girl you talked to once who now has a boyfriend. If she ever walks down the street on bin night she's going to regret not being your girlfriend but she'll be too late because tagging is the only mistress you'll ever worship! Ha. Girls! Tagging rulzzzzzz.

One time when I was 16 my friends and I fashioned a three hosed bong out of a four litre plastic bottle and some irigation tubing. We sat cross legged in a circle with my dog on the floor of my parents shed and made our way through a dinner plate of leafy weed. About halfway through we decided it was time to take it to the next level, to get into some harder stuff, something South American. I went inside and returned with a jar of Nescafe instant coffee. It didn't really burn too well and tasted like bitter bitter plastic. It was almost as bad as the time we smoked panadol. Or the time we peed in a bottle and then poured it in a letterbox. Why didn't we just pee in the letter box? It seems so much more perverse decanting from a bottle.

I didn't actually do that though (the bottle pee crime). A kid called "Oliver" did. He was a weird weird kid. He had a permanent bowl cut and always wore a 'parker' and played nothing but early Mac shareware games. He used to go continental delis and buy logs of marzipan and eat it like a chocolate bar. He was a year older than me but hung out with my little brother. They played Magic the Gathering and talked about orks. As he got older he became more perverse in his behaviour. My friend Chris 'Lizard' Howe and I wrote him a fake love letter from the girl down the road and hoped he'd go and see her and get punched by her brother.

The letter probably went like this:

"Dear Oliver,

I can't stop thinking about you. I really love you but haven't been able to tell you to your face. I really, really want to kiss you. And probably do sex to you.

Please eat the chocolate.
Love,
Colleen xoxox"

I attached a chocolate and sprayed the letter with my dad's deodrant so it smelt like a beautiful lady. The chocolate was a super hot warhead that I had covered in chocolate that we melted in the microwave and then wrapped in alfoil so it looked like a real chocolate that wasn't a warhead covered in gooey half seperated chocolate. Hoo boy when he ate that chocolate he was going to get a hot surprise! The problem was that no-one in the whole world, not even marzipan and Dad's nicorette chewing gum chomping Oliver, would eat it. It's dodgy alfoil packaging signaled 'danger' in the same way a number plate that says 'w8n . 4u' shouts 'bog lapping paedophile'.

Oliver didn't eat the chocolate. He didn't go to the girls house either. It was quite a letdown. He had my measure.

He peed into a Sunkist bottle. The pee was orange. Orange!

Green Room

I'm raw, roughage raw.

Le' Baromater

Hot chillies that are supposed to be hot but are not hot are not hot. How come the chillies one buys from supermarkets never seem to be hot, they're more like stunted capsicums. It's like drinking mid-strength beer from a plastic cup or trying to give yourself a golden shower. You're left flat and damp wanting some full force abuse. I ate a Laksa a few months ago that made my eyes sweat and almost gave me an anaphylactic reaction. I was constricting and spacing. It was made more awesome by the fact that I was dining with company could tell them that the laksa was extremely hot but not too hot for me, but would probably kill normal people, but you know I could actually have it hotter. Oh yeah I eat zimbabwean bird's eyes for breakfast like I just need things hot you know like I could probably drink two litres of tom yum and like ten tablespoons of chili paste and still be like 'that wasn't hot at all' and then get on my motorbike and actually jump a bus and you'd be amazed and i would be like "what? Haven't you seen me do that before? I do it all the time" and then I would smoke a cigarette in one draw and put the butt out on my tongue.

I have heard so many wankers talk of their chili prowess. A guy asked the girl behind the counter at the noodle bar down the road to "make sure it's really hot. Like make it as hot as you think is hot and then make it hotter." He had those fucked euro/slip thongs on.

When I was in primary school, my best friend and I found an old microwave that someone had dumped on the schools compost mountain. As soon as we saw it we picked up big sticks and ran to it. We started beating that microwave with a wizzfizz of pre-teen violent enthusiasm. A teacher with a big grey beard and short-shorts heard our howls and ran to douse the flames before a full scale white-good bash riot broke out across the oval.

He said that he didn't have a microwave at his house but he was pretty sure that "the nuclear material inside made people infertile". We stopped immediately. For at least a year after I was pretty sure I would either get ball cancer or AIDS from the drink fountain.

Prune Walker

I was thinking last night that it would be unfortunate to be someone who really liked eating prunes. Nobody would believe you. If I come over to your house and open the fridge to get a beer (check me out - drinking beer!) and saw a jar or bag of prunes I would say "Not getting enough fibre eh?" and raise my eyebrows like the self assured tosser I can be.

"That's not why I have them. I love the taste. I eat them with natural yoghurt for desert" You would say. And it would be true. You really liked prunes and find them to be delicious. The thing is I wouldn't believe you. I'd think that you were probably one of those people that ate nothing but meat and cheese and couldn't crap. That's what I'd think and all your "prunes are tasty!" wouldn't change my mind. Next time I saw you I would puff out my cheeks until my face went red and go "Uhhhhhhhhh!" You would call me a dickface and would be well within your rights but it wouldn't bother me as I "know" you're constipated and will continually refer to it everytime I see you eating.

Also, most days I walk my dog in the time period between 9 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. There are two schools in walking distance but I constantly avoid walking by them as I feel like I would look dodgy. Because everyone that walks a dog past a primary school must be a kiddy fiddler right?

Observations in the central north of central Perth. Key of P sharp. All rights reserved.

The other day I saw a well fed man with a pure white well-brushed ponytail. His head was round and kind of looked like a rolled roast that has been soaked for several hours in cheap wine. His pudgy fingers were strangled by a couple of rings. A couple of times I saw him remove the hair tie from his mane, shake the pony tail out and then retie tighter. I'm not sure if he felt that by cranking up a few levels of tightness he'd get some sort of facelift effect. He really paid that ponytail a lot of attention. He was stroking it and tossing it side to side. He was really proud of it.

His girlfriend didn't seem to have the same affection for it. She didn't seem to have any interest in him either. She was quiet and seemed to look off into the distance perhaps embarrassed by "Tony's" constant tail tugging. It was almost as if he was a 15 year old boy at home alone with a K-Mart underwear catalogue. He felt no shame and continued to pleasure himself quite eagerly.

Remember in the early 90's a ponytail was seen to be the marker of a successful yuppie? Like a SAAB convertible and a ponytail were the pinnacle of wankerness. The ponytail has somehow shifted its position in the world and is now really only the property of fuzzy teenage metalheads and a few perverse individuals. It's completely understandable. This guy looked like the kind of man who would happily drink the juice from a jar of pickled onions and proudly tell potential girlfriends it was his famous French soup. The kind of man that softens butter in the hairy folds of his favourite undies. The kind of man that borrows a toothbrush and calls dogs "sexy". The kind of man that would lick the soles of his shoes clean and sell them as "new with tags" on ebay and then tell his brother that business is booming. The kind of man that would shake John Howard's hand.

Ponytails. Actually, maybe just this specific ponytail. I'm not sure.